Sounds Familiar
Plagiarism and Oppo Research
Plagiarism is in the news this week, so I thought this newsletter should take a look at the topic.
I will begin with a confession: In my prior career as a political oppo researcher, I never came across an example of plagiarism.
Which makes me kind of sad, now that I look back on it.
It might be simply because the technology at the time (mostly pre-Internet) didn’t make the job easy. Unless it was painfully obvious to someone — a journalist, perhaps, or someone working in a campaign — that a politician had lifted a phrase from another source, plagiarism was difficult to detect.
That changed in 2000, as “plagiarism consultant” Jonathan Bailey explains:
Though plagiarism had long been against most schools' ethics codes, detecting it was a challenge. In 2000, Turnitin.com was launched. Though the technology was originally designed to detect “frat file” plagiarism, a pre-internet plagiarism technique that involves storing copies of physical essays for use in later years, it was adapted to deal with internet plagiarism, as well.
There are other “content similarity detection” programs out there, and oppo researchers use them every day.
A case study was easy to find.
In February 2014, the U.S. Senate confirmed President Barack Obama’s nomination of their colleague Max Baucus (D-MT) to be U.S. Ambassador to China. Montana Governor Steve Bullock, a Democrat, appointed his Lt. Governor, John Walsh, to fill out the remainder of Baucus’ term. Walsh quickly announced he would run for a full term.
Over at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, oppo researcher Mark McLaughlin began working on Walsh’s record. Something caught McLaughlin’s eye: “a very, very pro-Bush ‘neocon’ thesis that Sen. Walsh had written” in 2007. According to McLaughlin’s boss, NRSC executive director Rob Collins, this is what happened next:
Then he [McLaughlin] put it through an online translator that checks for plagiarism, and “the entire last five pages of it turned bright red,” said Collins. “It was pretty dead-to-rights plagiarism.”
The NRSC gave it to The New York Times; Johnathan Martin broke the story on July 13:
Most strikingly, the six recommendations Mr. Walsh laid out at the conclusion of his 14-page paper, titled “The Case for Democracy as a Long Term National Strategy,” are taken nearly word-for-word without attribution from a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace document on the same topic.
Walsh responded that whatever happened was unintentional:
Asked directly if he had plagiarized, he responded: “I don’t believe I did, no.”
His campaign went with “context” shortly thereafter:
On Wednesday, a campaign aide for Mr. Walsh did not contest the apparent plagiarism but suggested that it be viewed in the context of the senator’s long career.
Before pivoting to another explanation:
A Walsh campaign official told POLITICO, “At the time, Senator Walsh was prescribed medication used to treat PTSD. This does not excuse the mistake, but provides important context for the circumstances which the Senator was working in.”
Walsh dropped out of the race in August.
Tit-For-Tat
I reached out to a veteran of the National Republican Congressional Committee oppo research team for any memorable plagiarism finds, and he gave me the backstory on a yet another 2014 Democratic candidate.
In an earlier campaign cycle, oppo researchers in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee busted a Republican for plagiarism. In 2014, GOP oppo researchers decided to return the favor. They started with a universe of “targeted races” and winnowed that list down, focusing on campaigns that shared consulting teams. The NRCC oppo researchers figured the same people in those firms might be writing copy for two or more candidates, thereby increasing the possibility some of the content might be duplicated.
With that list of campaigns in hand, it became a simple matter of taking pages from candidate websites and entering them into Google. Examples of plagiarism leapt from their laptop screens and a target was identified: Staci Appel, candidate for Congress in Iowa’s 3rd District.
An Appel aide fell on his sword:
Ben Miller, Appel's campaign manager, said Monday he accepted responsibility for Appel's campaign copying the content that appeared on the website of Democrat Ann Callis, who is trying to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis of Taylorville in Illinois's 13th Congressional District.
"The language identified on that page was intended to be a temporary placeholder and was inadvertently published. We removed the copy when it was brought to our attention," Miller said.
Appel lost to Republican David Young that fall. The plagiarism controversy remains on her Wikipedia page.
An Ounce of Prevention
One would think candidates and their teams would have by now figured out how to detect and prevent career-ending plagiarism. But it just keeps happening.
It’s a rather simple fix: Task someone to run website content, draft speeches and other work product through one of the widely available “content similarity detection” programs and see if anything pops up. That person could even use Google for the job.
Or do nothing, and wait until an oppo researcher finds it.
(Photo: Shutterstock)